Daily Times

This week we must reminisce the ultimate price paid by Salmaan Taseer in holding aloft the fundamental rights of any human being to think, speak and associate with freedom. As a consequence of his murder, Pakistan once again stands at the crossroads, challenged by forces that sponsor obscurantism and bigotry and take away from the people the right to choose and express. Pakistani society is being pushed to an unsustainable division. The silent majority that wishes for itself a middle-of-the-road existence is being pushed to choose sides. There has never been a greater threat to Pakistan’s integrity and solidarity; sovereignty comes much, much later. This should be known as the real existential threat, the one that threatens our nationhood. Salmaan’s murder signifies the moment when Pakistan may have already played out the available flex.

Pakistan has never been through a worse crisis than the one it endures today. In 1971, we could live with the remaining half. For some time now, there have been forces threatening to snatch the remaining half away from us. We may lament the inadequacies in PPP’s governance, and God knows we have relentlessly crucified the party in power for being oblivious to the gathering storm, but where has the PML-N — the party in waiting — been, apart from some verbal vitriol? Without an opposition, the political landscape is incomplete, and without the PML-N, Pakistan’s political structure remains limbless. The PML-N has a reasonable reserve of intellect and yet as the nation and the state have weathered one storm after another, the PML-N has chosen to remain silent.

There can be various reasons. The party has genuinely wanted sustained democratic functioning. Smitten by their own experience of shredded democracy at the hands of scathing incompatibility with other institutions of the state, the PML-N has remained a silent partner in a re-enacted political process. The party’s leadership may have lost its zeal after embarrassing exposures to undeserved exile and serious setbacks in the form of familial hardship. The PML-N may have been caught in an unsuspected understanding with their partners in the Charter of Democracy (CoD) to let the two major political parties, one of them being the PML-N itself, to take full turns of tenure without disruptions a la the 1990s. Or simply, the party has granted itself an assurance that come-what-may it shall be their turn next at the helm because of dismal performance of the incumbents in power bestowing on the PML-N a relative advantage. Though a greatly more aware electorate now expects a lot more.

Political leadership of the nation is not an exclusive preserve of the party in power; it as much belongs to the entire political leadership, particularly to the second biggest political party on Pakistan’s political landscape. The PML-N’s latest 10-point agenda put forward to the government is reasonable but a tad bit late. What has kept the PML-N in wraps?

Consider. The PPP ran a minority government for a while and yet there was no one in the opposition willing to bring a no-confidence motion to the floor of the House. The PPP fails marvellously, is wallowing in heaps of corruption and graft charges, the nation continues to slide down to undignified living, and yet the largest opposition party, the PML-N, was unable to ask the prime minister to prove his majority. There cannot be a more unprepared or unsure opposition ever whose fundamental job is to find space for political power and pursue its own political agenda by replacing the party in power.

Some things are clear in the PML-N’s approach. Mian sahib has lost his zeal — one hopes there are no health problems — with a damaging consequence that the party has remained tied to its Punjab moorings. There has not been any effort in the last three years to re-establish the party outside Punjab and seek its old base of support. The party seems to have given up on Sindh, will accept what it gets in Balochistan, and is restricted to Hazara Division and Galliyat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in its traditional areas of influence. It is equally true that in each of these areas new dynamics have emerged while the PML-N leadership was in exile and there remains the need for manifold efforts to recover the lost ground. Even in Punjab, this time around it is not the same Shahbaz Sharif. The dependence is far too much on cultivating links among the media and some such perceived game-changers, neglecting the essential need for some strong grassroots work in the field. The party needs to face the fact that Punjab will remain divided between the PPP, the PML-N and not so insignificant PML-Q. Without Sindh it may therefore not be able to seal a victory — something that must be factored in the PML-N’s calculations as it seeks clear majority on its own in order to avoid intractable coalition politics.

Clearly, the PML-N is not yet ready for elections, which remains a serious indictment of the largest opposition party in parliament; it has no assurance of a victory were it to enter elections with its current organisational structure. The party has not worked at potential partners in the increasing likelihood of another coalition government even if polls are held full-term. It has rather serious fence-mending to do, which will remain a serious inhibitor. Its leadership was absent when the going was tough for the nation and the resulting despondence may yet surprise the party further in an electoral exercise. Implicitly all that reservoir of multifaceted intellect in the party has remained untapped even as the nation has continued to suffer. There has never been a programme offered by the party for masses’ relief from manifold predicaments. The party is instead seen to have played opportunistic politics and used issues such as Reformed General Sales Tax (RGST) and petroleum prices to whip up frenzy, without offering a practical way out to jump-start the economy. Principled stand on corruption and justice is essentially sloganeering, each needing long-term nourishment and enabling environment. In the interregnum, corruption will remain there while revenues will plummet, giving rise to increasing fiscal deficit, inflation and a further impoverishment in society where class consciousness and societal division will prevail and many will find reason to mow down those that do not belong to them. Such can be the price when leadership is found wanting in a nation.

Politics is a business of the astute and art of the possible. Principles are a useful plank but only as a tool of politics. MQM’s shifting to the opposition benches was short-lived; the PML-N misread the tealeaves and has ventured into another principled position. They may well pay for it by witnessing the end of their rule in Punjab. The PPP though may just bail the PML-N out. There has not been a more magnificent turn-around of a political environment in recent history. Such are the vagaries of our politics.

The writer is a retired air vice marshal and a former ambassador